With Israel's connivance, a PLO state is on the brink of being established within the boundaries of the Promised Land, the land promised to the Jewish people. This state, in the heart of the land of Israel, will give the lie to all our former commitments, the lie to our identity, the lie to Zionism, the lie to the greatest human challenge in recent history: the renaissance of the Jewish people.

While many have called attention to the strategic dangers such a Palestinian state entails, few have paid attention to the serious psychological ramifications, the mental and emotional fall-out for Jews. From being a people living in a small land that yet allowed some freedom of movement, Israel shall become a country confined within impossibly constraining borders, squeezed, confined, walled-in by enemies, constantly under siege.

We shall also become a people infiltrated by the enemy, by a sixth as well as by a fifth column. Despite the claim of the left that "they" shall be "there" and "we" shall be "here," the existence of an enemy population at Israel's side, without a natural border or buffer zone, whose ingress Israel cannot prevent, will lead to a truly intolerable situation. Israelis shall have to cope daily with an augmented Arab presence, escalating Arab pressures and demands. Israel's Arab citizens, who see themselves as part of the new Arab state rather than as part of the state of Israel, will feel empowered to take advantage of our manifest weakness. No longer shall Israelis be able to feel the pleasure of being among their own brethren, b'toch ami ani shochen (amongst my people I dwell). Nor is the threat purely a physical one: Jews will also face the danger of loss of the Jewish nature of the state, the erosion of Jewish culture, and the negation of Jewish values.

Once a PLO state is established, our children, to whom we wanted to grant one supreme privilege--to walk this land, the land that is theirs, aware that they belong to it and it belongs to them, will be able to feel so no longer. For even that which remains will be tainted with the question "Is it really ours?" Their pride will be destroyed, attachment severed, ownership in question. They will come to feel again they are here on suffrage, not by right; tolerated, not sovereign; temporary, not permanent; sad again, despairing again, flotsam again. This will fuel emigration, adding to the massive emigration that can be expected from those who are disillusioned, despairing, cheated of a dream.

For make no mistake: despair will be rampant. Many will give up. For if this is not our land, then this, many will feel, is not the place to spend one's life. If this is not to be a Jewish country, if this is not the fulfillment of a dream, a promise, a prophesy, if this ideal/dream was an error, then it may be time to go "back home." And "home" will no longer be the Land of Israel, which will no longer be ours, but those cities in the disapora which served as bases for the achievement-oriented Jews who wanted to make good in the lands of the exile. And, since those who leave will be those who can leave-- who have a place to go back to in the more stable, wealthy nations--we can expect to lose many of those who contribute most to the country.

For those who remain, the realities will be bleak indeed. Those who gloried in our scenery, our symbols, our language, our culture, shall be able to do so no longer. Those who dared to dream of achieving equality

For those who remain, the realities will be bleak indeed.

All Israelis, on the left as well as the right, can be expected to manifest feelings of deep alienation and the depression that ensues. We can expect also a serious exacerbation of the problem of guilt. Consciously or unconsciously, the Jews of Israel will know that they missed the opportunity of generations. They were the ones who failed to meet the challenge, who feared to take sovereignty, who said "no" to Nezach Yisrael (the Eternity of Israel). They are the generation that gave in, gave up, gave away--the destructive sons who could not live up to the stature of the founding fathers.

We can expect, then, a people drowning in guilt, depression, sorrow, frozen in helplessness and impotence. This, predictably, will lead to the proliferation of false beliefs and fake messiahs promising redemption, and the proliferation of drugs, cults, and suicide. As if this were not bad enough, the guilt and despair will breed a seething cauldron of inner frustration and anger. That anger will lead to what is known in psychology as "displacement," the redirection of aggression from the real Arab enemy to safer, more available, more "acceptable" targets within the Jewish body politic. Violence within Israeli society can be expected to reach frightening proportions as subgroups become the scapegoats for the hate and anger, leading to ever greater division, sepa-

June-July 2000               - 3 -               Outpost